Organized by the Graduate Student Council Academic Research and Careers Committee; recorded by the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education.]]>
Wed, 30 Jul 2014 17:01:34 -0400http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/29530-academic-career-series-academia-industry-or-both
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/29530-academic-career-series-academia-industry-or-both
Academic Career Series: Academia, Industry, or Both
Professional and personal development Finding a Good Postdoc
Are you considering a career in academia? Are you seeking to diversify your research skills before launching into an industry career? Perhaps you are already a postdoc, and wish to maximize your experience or make a change. This panel presentation will discuss various aspects of finding, selecting, and having a good postdoc experience, and will include a question and answer segment.]]>
Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:04:43 -0400http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/21226-finding-a-good-postdoc
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/21226-finding-a-good-postdoc
Finding a Good Postdoc
Professional and personal development Celebrating Science and Engineering Breakthroughs IV
Katrin Wehrheim, Associate Professor of Mathematics, MIT; Sallie Chisholm, Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Biology, MIT; Nancy Kanwisher, '80, PhD '86, Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Description: The wind"up session of this multi"part symposium on women at MIT brings together brains and brine -- two researchers' pioneering work in neuroscience and ocean microbes.

In 1985, Sallie (Penny) Chisholm discovered Prochlorococcus, a "tiny, round, green thing that's not so beautiful but extraordinary." Lined up, 100 of these sub"micron size phytoplankton come to the width of a human hair, and they turn out to be the most abundant photosynthetic cell on the planet. There are so many Prochlorococcus distributed through global oceans that their accumulated weight would amount to one billion people. Most important, life as we know it would not be possible without these (and other) photosynthetic ocean creatures, which produce a large share of the planet's oxygen.

Chisholm has spent more than two decades devoted to in"depth study of Prochlorococcus, which even as a single species presents many "ecotypes." Some fare better in great depths, far from the sun, others closer to the surface. Research has verified 12 genetically different strains of Prochlorococcus occupying different ocean niches _ and given that there are 1027 cells in the wild, many more genomes are literally floating around. Chisholm ultimately wants to understand why certain types of Prochlorococcus appear in particular ecosystems, and not in others. For instance, Prochlorococcus follow the Gulf Stream, but "disappear near Massachusetts." With faster gene sequencing, Chisholm and colleagues have been sampling seawater from around the world for Prochlorococcus, hoping to understand better the reasons for their diversity, and how they fit into the larger physical and chemical systems of the oceans.
Nancy Kanwisher approaches fundamental questions involving the nature of the human mind using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), which enables investigation of both structure and function of the brain. In particular, Kanwisher has been exploring whether the brain features regions specialized for specific purposes. Her studies have turned up several such areas: the fusiform face area of the brain, responsible only for face recognition; the parahippocampal place area, a region that responds to images of places or scenes; and the "third and most disreputable region," the extrastriate body area, which responds to pictures of bodies, body parts _ whether stick figures or silhouettes.

These regions are found in the architecture of all normal human brains, Kanwisher says, and their existence raises additional questions that she and other researchers are pursuing. For instance, to learn when these areas become wired in the brain, Kanwisher scanned children. She learned that kids as young as five years showed the same face recognition brain activity as adults. There is evidence "implicating genes" in face recognition. But there is a role for experience as well. Although there is a brain region that responds strongly to visual words and letter strings, the "selectivity of the region" depends on an individual's history (such as familiarity with written characters from specific languages). Kanwisher concludes that while there are some "highly specialized bits" of the mind/brain made up of specialized components, "these may be relatively rare, and there is probably lots of general purpose machinery."

About the Speaker(s): From 2007 to 2010, Katrin Wehrheim served as assistant professor of math at MIT. She received the B.S. equiv. in mathematics and physics from the University of Hamburg in 1995, and the Diploma in physics from Imperial College in 1996. She completed the Ph.D. in mathematics at ETH Z orich in 2002. Wehrheim's thesis was awarded the ETH Medal. She continued at ETH Z orich as a postdoctoral fellow, 2002"03, before going to Princeton University as instructor, 2003"04. She was a member of Institute of Advanced Studies, 2004"06 and fellow at Princeton, 2005"06.

Wehrheim's research interests include problems in gauge theory and symplectic topology and PDEs, in particular the relations of gauge theoretic and symplectic Floer theories.

Host(s): Office of the President, MIT150 Inventional Wisdom

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Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:42:15 -0500http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16775-celebrating-science-and-engineering-breakthroughs-iv
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16775-celebrating-science-and-engineering-breakthroughs-iv
Celebrating Science and Engineering Breakthroughs IV
MIT World — special events and lectures Shaping Policy in Academia and Across the Nation
Marc A. Kastner, Dean, MIT School of Science; Robert Birgeneau, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley; Dean of the School of Science, MIT 1991"2000; Heidi B. Hammel, SB '82, Executive Vice President, Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy; Lisa Maatz, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, American Association of University Women

Description: Issues of work/life balance and campus climate dominate this panel looking at policies to foster and retain girls and women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). As moderator Marc Kastner notes, in spite of dramatic improvements at places like MIT, significant challenges remain.

The University of California, Berkeley has seen "slow but steady progress," reports Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. Women represent just under 30% of the overall faculty now; 20% serve in STEM fields. Much of these gains he attributes to family"friendly policies the university has implemented in recent years, such as lightening duties and extending the tenure clock for new parents; a campus concierge to help with relocation and spouse job hunts; and a large childcare program subsidized for graduate and undergraduate students. "Many small things that make life easier for people -- when you remove these typical barriers, have an incredibly important effect on women's careers and satisfaction levels," says Birgeneau. The university has also decided that "equity and inclusion need to be part of every conversation," and has created a senior administrative position devoted to this goal. There is also a new research center focusing on multiculturalism, diversity, and democracy, which Birgeneau hopes will eventually yield "the functional equivalent of Nobel Prizes in equity and inclusion."

As a single mom with three kids, Heidi Hammel "knows all about family issues." She describes the difficulty of striking a work"life balance, using props she collected from her own house. She tosses different"colored Lego pieces representing Work and Life into paper cups dangling from either side of a scale held together by straws and a crayon. As urgent job duties vie with family crises, the Legos pile up first in one cup, then the other, and the scale never steadies _ just like real life in academia and elsewhere. "Policies can helpbut won't solve the problem," says Hammel, who relates her early struggles at MIT as a research scientist. "All these programs for faculty don't help people like me, and there are many young women here who won't necessarily become faculty. What are we doing to help them?" Hammel left MIT when she wasn't permitted to work off site, but then found a more accommodating employer. "The message: it's not easy being a full"time working scientist, academic and parent." She asks high"level administrators to help "young people in your midst not on tenure track."

The American Association of University Women has a long history of working on STEM, Lisa Maatz recounts. In 1920, the association gave Marie Curie her first gram of radium (worth $150 thousand). Today, it strives to direct school girls toward science and engineering, and "deal with the climate issue" for women in academia. Some key activities include pressing for changes in the No Child Left Behind law to make science a more prominent course of study; helping girls get into the right math track in middle school; ensuring that educational programs, and not just sports, comply with Title 9 (the 1972 law barring gender discrimination in programs receiving federal financing); and lobbying for increased childcare funding, as well as "commonsense" changes in campus childcare programs such as night and weekend hours.

About the Speaker(s): Marc Kastner joined the Department of Physics in 1973, was named Donner Professor of Science in 1989, appointed Department Head in February 1998, and in July 2007, became Dean of the School of Science. A graduate of the University of Chicago (S.B. 1967, M.S. 1969, Ph.D. 1972), he was a research fellow at Harvard University prior to joining MIT.

He served as Head of the MIT Department of Physics Division of Atomic, Condensed Matter, and Plasma Physics from 1983 to 1987, and as Associate Director of MIT's Consortium for Superconducting Electronics-a collaborative program designed to advance the technology of thin"film superconducting electronics-from 1989 to 1992. He served as Director of MIT's Center for Materials Science and Engineering from 1993 to 1998.

Description: Although these three speakers travel in quite disparate worlds -- natural language processing, mechanics of tiny organisms, and violent cosmic events -- they convey a comparably infectious enthusiasm for their research.

In the early days of artificial intelligence, "people had the na've idea that if you took a computer, and fed it with enough human knowledge, it could eventually understand human language," relates Regina Barzilay. In the 1990s, after this "spectacular failure" in methodology, a new approach evolved: training a machine to infer knowledge from piles of data. Some successes are already in evidence (IBM's chess" and Jeopardy"playing programs). Barzilay wants to move this learning further, toward "grounding interpretation of language in the real world." She describes algorithms that could take over the often exasperating grunt work of installing new Windows software on computers, by reading common instructions and executing the actions. Her system learns to map words with increasing accuracy by using feedback. She is also investigating how to get a machine to understand and act in a much more complex environment, such as the Civilization computer game. Using simulations, her algorithms make predictions about the best possible moves (e.g., invade another nation), and can even absorb instructions from the game's manual, which should make the system "good enough to play against humans." Her ultimate goal: "enabling computers to function competently in a world rich in unstructured information."

For tiny organisms in a fluid environment, a key challenges is viscosity, says Anette Hosoi . In particular, Hosoi focuses on eukaryotic cells with spherical heads attacked to flexible tails. Remarkably, the diameters of these tails are the same across all species -- between 250"400 nanometers. Whether a hair in a lung, or a cell in green algae, these tails are all made of microtubule structures that can slide and bend in similar ways. By analyzing these common properties, Hosoi can predict optimal morphology and kinematics of comparable tailed microorganisms. For instance, analyzing sperm cells, Hosoi's team determined that the best ratio of tail to head for swimming efficiency is 12 _ and not just for sperm. "I don't care what the species is, what it's made out of, the tail should be 12 times as long as the headGetting something as clean as that is very exciting!" One outlier in the study: the Bandicoot, whose sperm's fat tail did not share the same radius as all the others. This kind of optimization research, says Hosoi, can only improve, as the computational costs of analyzing vast repositories of biological data continue to drop. When you begin to understand underlying principles in biological structures, she says, "you can move on to inform engineering designs."

Nergis Mavalvala takes her audience "to a slightly uncomfortable side of the universe, warped and violent." She searches the cosmos using "a completely new messenger -- gravitational waves that travel to us from distant sources." Mavalvala credits Einstein (by way of Newton) for first proposing these waves. He developed a picture of space and time "as a fabric" that can be dented by massive objects, exerting a gravitational pull. Massive objects bouncing around or vibrating caused "ripples of space time itself" -- hence gravitational waves. To produce these waves, says Mavalvala, you need lots of mass and rapid acceleration, explosions and collisions _ produced by compact stars slamming together, merging black holes, and the conditions that immediately followed the Big Bang. Using special detectors (laser interferometers), Mavalvala has been trying to detect gravitational waves. The first measurements taken by these detectors found a gamma ray burst explosion, but no gravitational waves. A next"generation detector is on the way that makes it possible to "listen to more distant sounds," but Mavalvala notes that at this level of "exquisite measurement," you pay the price of "quantum uncertainty." However, she is certain the elusive gravitational wave will finally be captured, and "we will be testing general relativity: the first direct observation of ripples of space"time."

About the Speaker(s): In addition to her other appointments, Penny Chisholm currently serves as co"director of Terrascope, an MIT learning community for freshmen. She is also a visiting scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. From 1988"1995, she served as the MIT Director of the MIT/Woods Hole Joint Program in Oceanography.

Chisholm received the 2005 Huntsman Award for Excellence in Marine Science, and is a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Investigator in Marine Science. She has published papers in PNAS and Nature. She received her Ph.D. in Biology in 1974 from S.U.N.Y. Albany.

Description: Three eminent scientists in biology and medical engineering discuss their pioneering work at MIT -- a research base they regard as unmatched for its collaborative environment and enthusiasm for even the most marginal and offbeat ideas. Moderator and colleague Hazel Sive hails these speakers as among those who have helped "move women to where they should be as intellectual leaders."

Susan Lindquist explains her investigation of a unicellular organism -- yeast -- leading to an understanding of "some of mankind's most devastating diseases," including ALS, Parkinson's, Huntington's, and dementia. All these neurodegenerative disorders are characterized by "globs of misfolded proteins" such as the amyloid plaques seen in Alzheimer's patients.

Lindquist notes that long strings of amino acids are powerless until they assume intricate shapes to code DNA. This occurs in "an absolutely ridiculous environment," she remarks. "Not only is it crowded, but the cells are experiencing a tremendous amount of kinetic energyconstantly bumping into each othernot like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogersmore like the characters in a Marx Brothers movie where chaos is poised on the precipice of disaster." Neurons are especially prone to detrimental outcomes of protein misfolding, more so with age.

Yeast serves as Lindquist's experimental subject because it is cheap, fast growing, easily manipulated, and sports a thoroughly documented genome, making it "a living test tubea dream come true for biology." Through genetic screens, she identifies compounds that ultimately can be applied therapeutically in humans. The goal is to treat Parkinsonism via "personalized medicine" according to the unique genetic composition of a given patient in order to obtain optimal response.

JoAnne Stubbe speaks passionately about radicals, "reductive metabolites of oxygen gas." Commonly thought of as destructive, these mercurial molecules cause oxidation that may mutate DNA, and in turn, result in disease or aging. Conversely, they can also exhibit beneficial behavior. "Nature has figured out how to harness the reactivity of these radicals to do extremely challenging chemistry with exquisite specificity," says Stubbe.

In particular, Stubbe's work concentrates on ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs), enzymes crucial to DNA replication and repair via a catalytic reaction with free radicals. Her laboratory has been unraveling this process for over 30 years. She calls ribonucleotide reductases "a veritable playground for free radical chemistry." Her efforts have proven fruitful not only in theoretical discovery but also in therapeutic applications. RNRs are targets of clinical drugs for leukemia and other hematological cancers.

Stubbe concludes by broadening the scope "for those of you who like to think about evolution." RNRs are essential intermediaries in the polypeptide assembly machine, the process by which proteins are synthesized. These radical"exploiting enzymes are integral to the creation of every life form by enabling the transformative link from RNA to DNA.

Sangeeta Bhatia explores signaling pathways, structures, and functional interdependencies within tissue microenvironments of 100 microns and smaller. "Five hundred to 50 nanometersis the perfect length scale" for examining the microenvironment of the liver, in which hepatocytes are her interest.

Because liver failure is lethal and donor organs are scarce, Bhatia hopes to build "an engineered liver that you would implant off the shelf." Since the liver conducts 500 functions, this is a daunting mission requiring versatile cell architecture, chemistry and proliferation. Conventional CAD manufacturing methods can construct infinitesimal 3D scaffolding that suspends cross"linked cells in a liquid "like fruits in Jell"O," Bhatia says. Thus far, she and her team have made minuscule disk"shaped livers for mice. "We need about 10 billion cells to get into a human patient," she declares with determination.

Bhatia also studies the detoxification capability of the liver, and is developing drugs to fight infections. Currently she has a pharmaceutical compound in clinical trials for hepatitis C. She exclaims, "This was a real thrill as an inventor." In addition, she is pursuing the malaria"inducing parasite that initially attacks hepatocytes before bursting into the bloodstream.

About the Speaker(s): Hazel Sive is Associate Dean of the School of Science at MIT as well as Professor of Biology and Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She arrived at Whitehead in 1991, where her work focuses on zebrafish and frog embryos to understand the evolution and molecular structure of the vertebrate nervous system.

In 1992, Sive was named a Searle Scholar and received a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. Sive earned her undergraduate degree from the University of
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, in chemistry
and zoology and her Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in molecular biology, in 1986.

Sive traces the earliest stages of neural development in vertebrates. She has identified more than 50 genes involved in the decision to begin making neural tissue from the undifferentiated cells in a young embryo. The work could provide new insights into neurological diseases, spinal cord injuries, and cancer.

Description: Four women who have made ground"breaking contributions in different disciplines describe their research, which has not only involved 'thinking outside the box,' but in some cases persevering in the face of skepticism.

Two presenters work on the frontier of biological systems and materials science, and find both inspiration and practical subject matter in aquatic life forms. For Angela Belcher, the abalone offers a model for development of organic/inorganic hybrid structures. The shell of this creature, which is 3000 times tougher than its purely geological counterpart, consists of stacks of calcium carbonate in precise geometries, made from just 20 different amino acids, says Belcher. Some years ago, she had the insight that it might be possible to fabricate hybrid materials, kind of like an abalone, "at a living/nonliving interface." She set about creating an organism that could build structures like battery electrodes, using bacterial hosts injected with viruses that had an affinity for a particular material. "When I said I was trying to develop a genetic link between semiconductor materials and biology, I was told I was insane," says Belcher. "But it came out OK." Undaunted, Belcher is now developing biological batteries with virus"sized electrodes and other devices for environmental and medical applications.

Christine Ortiz can probe structural biological materials down to the molecular level. She wants to understand the bio"mechanical architecture of organisms inside and out that contribute to their ability to withstand harsh conditions such as high temperatures and pressures, and physical blasts, and find ways of emulating these systems for human use. She was drawn to biological materials "because of their complexity and beauty," and collected a lab full of live, exotic animal models. She fastened on one particularly helpful organism: the three"spined stickleback fish whose flexible ceramic armor resists penetration. Ortiz examined this fish armor all the way to a nano scale, to understand and possibly recreate its unique geometry, strength, load"bearing capacity, and flexibility. She is discovering "some uniform, universal design principles" that may come in handy developing better protective devices for people.

Two planetary scientists describe their bold ventures. A physicist by training, Sara Seager became interested in exoplanets in 1996. "People were still uncertain these were real, and said, don't work on this." Increasing numbers of candidate planets began to emerge, as detection techniques improved. Seager was refining her own search strategy, investigating distant chemical signatures of exoplanet atmospheres, and found a home at MIT in 2007, where "people are really open to new ideas that the rest of the world thinks are crazy and impossible." She connected with space systems engineering, and a team of eager students in the "technologically challenging" quest of "finding Earths suitable for follow"up observations." They are designing a fleet of inexpensive nanosatellites to launch into low"earth orbit to detect possible exoplanets. Seager describes an imagined Earth"like planet, orbiting close to its sun. With one side locked in permanent night, and one side in permanent day, "it might not be such a great place to visit."

Maria Zuber seems convinced that Mars, so inhospitable at the moment, at one point offered the right conditions for life. She walks through the 3+ billion year Martian history, with an early period featuring astonishingly prolific volcanic flows ("10 thousand Mauna Loas worth of volcanism"), which yielded CO2 for the atmosphere, water for the surface, and ample warmth. The current surface of the planet, she shows, reveals evidence of this water, with riverbeds and mudcracks. Liquid water remains, but beneath the surface, where it is warmer.

While there is "an incredible emotional bias" to discover Earth"like life on Mars, Zuber knows it will look different. She's seeking "life in extreme environments," and sniffing for ribosomal RNA -- the stuff of "extraterrestrial genomes." She has eager accomplices: "It's fantastic to be at a place like MIT where when you say you want to do something like look for life on Mars, people actually want to help you rather than tell you you're out of your mind."

About the Speaker(s): In 2006, Angela Belcher was named 2006 Research Leader of the Year and a member of the Scientific American 50," the magazine's annual list of individuals, teams, companies and other organizations whose accomplishments demonstrate outstanding technological leadership. Belcher was recognized for "the use of custom"evolved viruses to advance nanotechnology," according to the magazine.

Belcher won a MacArthur Fellowship Award in 2004 and has also received the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (2000), and the Du Pont Young Investigators Award (1999).

Prior to MIT, Belcher was an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas, Austin. She received her B.S. in 1991 from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her Ph.D. from the same institution in 1997.

Description: Two influential academic leaders, both holding a significant place in MIT's history, reflect on efforts to achieve gender equity in science and engineering at MIT and other institutions of higher learning.

"In spite of steps to promote diversity, underrepresentation of women at all faculty levels persists," says Shirley Ann Jackson. She admires MIT's decade"plus work on these issues, which spurred much broader self" scrutiny and policy changes among research universities, yet notes that "we're still a long way from gender equity in science and engineering." Jackson says, "Not knowing, not understanding and not intending do not get us off the hook. We're still responsible for bias that puts obstacles in front of talented, capable people." This is not merely a moral problem, Jackson says, but a practical one, too, because society cannot afford to deny itself the expertise of so many competent people "when we face immense global challenges."

At every step of the way, from entering college as a science or engineering major, sticking with a course of studies through graduate school, and then attaining tenure, women need "bridges" to help them get to the next level, whether through mentors, flexible tenure clocks or childcare. Jackson notes that the "unequal burden of family turns gaps in the road into chasms." She detects new hurdles on the horizon as well: family and gender issues are still viewed as "women's issues," at least beyond MIT; and economic pressures may create resistance to gender bias measures. Jackson also points to the phenomenon of "pink collar discrimination," where salary levels drop in some fields such as biomedical engineering as women's numbers approach men's, suggesting that women may be undervalued, or lack tough salary negotiating skills. Jackson believes social networks may be key to introducing the next generation to science and engineering, and helping women establish and maintain careers.

Speaking "as a white male," Charles Vest says men of his generation in academia assumed that "if you filled the undergraduate pipeline," you'd solve the problem of underrepresentation of women in science and engineering professions. The reality was different, admits Vest, because even if 50% of the undergraduates in these fields were women, many fewer ended up with careers in science and engineering. Vest describes the data"driven studies conducted at MIT, and the groundbreaking policies that followed, which led to advances in bolstering and retaining numbers of women graduates and faculty. He points to similar ventures at other universities.

But for all the work to address gender issues in academia, major leaks persist in the pipeline. He displays national data showing how the number of women Ph.D.'s has grown enormously in life sciences in the past decade, but lags greatly in physical sciences and especially in engineering. A recent study showed that only 1.6% of all female university graduates are engineers, which greatly disturbs Vest: "This is not a number that can sustain our society going into the future." Ultimately, he says, "Numbers really do matter," because "we have to achieve critical mass before the culture starts to change."

About the Speaker(s): Ian A. Waitz was named Dean of Engineering in February 2011. He also serves as the Director of the Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction (PARTNER), an FAA/NASA/Transport Canada"sponsored Center of Excellence. His principal areas of interest are the modeling and evaluation of climate, local air quality and noise impacts of aviation.

Waitz has written approximately 75 technical publications, including a report to the U.S. Congress on aviation and the environment. He holds three patents and has consulted for many organizations. During 2002"2005 he was Deputy Head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has also served as an associate editor of the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power. In 2003, Waitz received a NASA Turning Goals Into Reality Award for Noise Reduction. He was awarded the FAA 2007 Excellence in Aviation Research Award. He is a Fellow of the AIAA, and an ASME and ASEE member. He was honored with the 2002 MIT Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Award and appointment as an MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellow in 2003.

Waitz received his B.S. in 1986 from the Pennsylvania State University; his M.S. in 1988, from George Washington University; and his Ph.D.in 1991, from the California Institute of Technology.

Description: It's difficult to imagine that at one point in her career, National Academy of Science member Nancy Hopkins thought to quit. In her talk, she relates the historical challenges facing women in science and engineering at MIT, the university's responses to these problems, and how in the end Hopkins avoided becoming a poster child of the 'leaky pipeline' -- a term of art for the high rate of attrition among talented women in engineering and science academia.

Hopkins weaves together a personal tale with the larger story of gender discrimination in U.S. academia. She first captures a century of women at MIT, from the handful of female admissions starting in the late 19th century, to the current numbers: 45% of all undergraduates, 29% of graduate students and 17% of the faculty. However, there were no women science or engineering faculty in the first 100 years. During this period, the exclusion of top"notch women researchers from major academic posts was common, says Hopkins, a reflection of the fact that "societal beliefs can overpower merit." A major turning point arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, when the civil rights and women's movements flung open workplace doors to women.

But Hopkins notes that even after passage of laws against overt job discrimination, obstacles emerged to the advancement of women scientists and engineers, "unanticipated and largely invisiblealmost as effective at excluding women as the fact they couldn't get a job at all." There was sexual harassment, which "made it impossible for women to be equal in the workplace." Hopkins recalls in her undergraduate days grossly inappropriate behavior toward her by a Nobel Prize"winning biologist in a Harvard lab, but "didn't grasp until years later that a man who treats a student that way may not be genuinely interested in her lab notes." Mentors who could smooth the way to the next career step were few and far between for women students and young faculty. And unlike men, women have to choose between children or career. Hopkins says "women in my generation instinctively never talked about pregnancy or children at workYou wanted to make sure people knew you wanted to be a nun of science, and in fact personally, I was." Hopkins cites as well "unconscious gender bias," where women's research appeared to colleagues of both genders less valuable than identical research by a man, and accompanying marginalization in university departments. Up against these problems, who could blame women for departing their professions, asks Hopkins.

At MIT, serious relief arrived in 1994, after Hopkins, demoralized after trying in vain to obtain more lab space for her zebrafish experiments, found similarly unhappy women colleagues who banded together to press for institutional solutions. Hopkins literally went about measuring lab space and provided hard data about gender bias to then MIT President Charles Vest, as evidence that women had less space available to conduct their research. (This "tape measure" turning point has earned Hopkins an unintended place in MIT history, while the tape measure itself is on display at the MIT Museum.)

In stages, over the subsequent years, MIT began intensively recruiting women scientists and engineers for its faculty; creating new family leave policies; and placing women in top administrative roles, among a number of remedies. 19% of science faculty are now women, and surveys show a much higher level of satisfaction among this group. But Hopkins says the job is not yet finished: Women at MIT, from students to faculty, report "the perception that when women advance, it is due to the lowering of standards." The leaky pipeline won't be fixed until "this insidious belief that women are less good than men" vanishes within MIT and society at large.
http://museum.mit.edu/150/71

About the Speaker(s): Nancy Hopkins earned widespread recognition for cloning vertebrate developmental genes. Using a technique called insertional mutagenesis -- designed for such invertebrate animals as the fruit fly -- Hopkins's laboratory has cloned hundreds of genes that play a role in creating a viable fish embryo.

Hopkins' research earned her 1998 election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999 election to the Institute of Medicine and 2004 election to the National Academy of Sciences. She speaks frequently about gender equity issues in science.

Hopkins obtained a B.A. from Radcliffe College in 1964 and a Ph.D. from the department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Harvard University in 1971.

Host(s): Office of the President, MIT150 Inventional Wisdom

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Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:32:23 -0500http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16768-the-status-of-women-in-science-and-engineering-at-mit
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16768-the-status-of-women-in-science-and-engineering-at-mit
The Status of Women in Science and Engineering at MIT
MIT World — special events and lectures Excellence is a Shared Path: Working Together for Justice and the Quality of Life
Dr. Susan Hockfield, President, MIT; Roland S. Martin, CNN contributor

Description: Exploring the past opens up new perspectives on the present and offers ways of navigating a challenging future, these speakers suggest, in a call to action on the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.

Susan Hockfield has been "digging into MIT's history," where she finds seeds for the institute's distinct culture. One core aspect of this culture, sustained over MIT's 150 years, is the idea of "rewarding talent and initiative regardless of social position or pedigree," says Hockfield. However, as she describes, meritocracy has sometimes been more of an aspiration than reality. Hockfield cites examples of the grudging acceptance of women students in the 19th and early 20th century. In the 1961 centennial, there were only 155 women enrolled in a student body of more than 6,000, she says. "Today, through a conscious and sustained outreach, 45% of undergraduates are now women."

Although MIT now boasts far more students and faculty of underrepresented minorities, Hockfield says that "opening doors turns out to be the easy part." It is more difficult ensuring that "those who come from outside the circle of affluence or white privilege can count on a sense of full citizenship." MIT's central challenge must be "full inclusion," states Hockfield, and the Institute should lead the nation in attaining this goal.

Don't show up at a King celebration, says Roland Martin, if you do not intend to recommit to "his cause, his ideals and vision." Martin frets that today's young people are waiting for the right moment "to take charge and get involved." It was not always so. In 1955, a handful of pastors in Montgomery, Alabama chose a very young Martin Luther King to lead the city's improvement association. It was high school and college students who frequently led the charge with lunch counter sit"ins, boycotts, and other protests that launched the Civil Rights movement. br>
Martin notes the sense of lowered expectations around President Obama's administration, as if "folks voted, and then said, I'm done, did my part, when in fact, the election was the beginning of a process, not the end." Young people must "give a damn about something" other than themselves, and understand that the work involved often lasts for years. Martin invokes the Bible's Nehemiah, who rallied people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. "What's your wall?" he asks: "Literacy? Economic development? HIV/AIDS? The point is, start where you are, then move on to the street, block, neighborhood, nation"

Martin notes that his audience totals more than the number of those who met half a century ago in the Montgomery church basement, setting in motion a nationwide movement. There is enough "brain power, energy, passion in this room to literally change the world," he says, and "it's been done before, we have empirical data to prove it." Concludes Martin, "It's time to stop talking, meeting and start leading, whether young or old, to rebuild the crumbling walls in this country."

About the Speaker(s): A nationally syndicated columnist, Roland Martin is the author of Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith, Speak, Brother! A Black Man's View of America, and his most recent book, The First: President Barack Obama's Road to the White House as originally reported by Roland S. Martin.

Martin is a commentator for TV One Cable Network and host of Washington Watch with Roland Martin, a one"hour Sunday morning news show. He is also an analyst for CNN. In October 2008, he joined the Tom Joyner Morning Show as senior analyst.

Named by Ebony Magazine in 2008, 2009 and 2010 as one of the 150 Most Influential African Americans in the United States, he is the 2009 winner of the NAACP Image Award for Best Interview for "In Conversation: The Michelle Obama Interview."

Martin is the former executive editor/general manager of the Chicago Defender, the nation's most historic black newspaper. He previously served as owner/publisher of Dallas"Fort Worth Heritage, a Christian monthly newspaper. He has won more than 30 professional awards for journalistic excellence, including a regional Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors; top reporting honors from the National Association of Black Journalists; the National Association of Minorities in Cable. and the National Associated Press"Managing Editors Conference.

Martin earned a B.S. in journalism in 1991 from Texas A&M University. In May 2008, Martin received a master's degree in Christian Communications from Louisiana Baptist University.

Host(s): Office of the President, MIT Annual Breakfast Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

]]>
Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:06:42 -0500http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16739-excellence-is-a-shared-path-working-together-for-justice-and-the-quality-of-life
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16739-excellence-is-a-shared-path-working-together-for-justice-and-the-quality-of-life
Excellence is a Shared Path: Working Together for Justice and the Quality of Life
MIT World — special events and lectures Education Across Borders: The India Perspective
Shri Kapil Sibal, Honourable Minister of Human Resource Development, Government of India

Description: Rickshaw drivers in India are frequent victims of tuberculosis after just a few years inhaling traffic fumes. This near"epidemic went unacknowledged until Kapil Sibal demanded a solution. The fix, now gaining traction across the country, is a solar"powered vehicle that eliminates pedaling. But what began as a project to assist his nation's afflicted rickshaw drivers has broadened into a much grander scheme in Sibal's hands. Project 800 is a government venture to apply science and technology to better the lives of India's 800 million citizens facing a multitude of hardships.

Sibal's mission at MIT is not merely to communicate his people's great challenges, but to recruit. He is candid: "MIT should be a partner in Project 800," helping to solve the "ordinary problems of ordinary men with ordinary lives." Sibal wonders how the globalization of trade, manufacturing and services alone will solve the extraordinary problems of India in the 21st century: feeding a growing population with a limited amount of arable land just as the green revolution has gone "gray;" managing the impacts of global warming and greater energy demands; and the spread of health threats that respect no national borders. Solutions to these problems, Sibal believes, depend in large part on the globalization of education -- the dissemination of scientific and technical know"how from places like MIT to India.

But this flow of transformative ideas, warns Sibal, requires a "change in the mindset of educational institutions." They must begin to perceive their community as global, and also be willing to move where they are needed. "They are not silos of knowledge living in one part of the world, protecting the national interest, saying as long as we're OK, it doesn't matter what else is happening in the world." Academic institutions must find common cause with other communities, learn that problems thousands of miles away have the power to touch home. "There should be an element of self"interest. It should be win"win," says Sibal.

To that end, Sibal invites MIT to partner with India on site in projects "to combat the challenges of tomorrow." He sees natural affiliations that increase the odds for success in these collaborations: "freedom of speech, diversity of culture, the enormous ability to have dialog." MIT also lends such ventures another advantage, says Sibal -- a woman president, "who has the vision to create, nurture and transform."

About the Speaker(s): Kapil Sibal received his M.A. in History from St. Stephen`s College, University of Delhi, Delhi and LL.M. from Harvard Law School.

Sibal served as the Additional Solicitor General of India from Dec. 1989 to Dec.1990, and was the Secretary of the Congress Parliamentary Party. During 1995"96, 1997"98 and 2001"2002, Sibal held the post of President of the Supreme Court Bar Association. He was Co"Chairman of the Indo"US Parliamentary Forum, 2002. Sibal was chosen as the Member of Rajya Sabha during 1998"2004.

Description: Two "sisters" -- both university chiefs -- celebrate the victory of the first African"American U.S. President, but remind listeners that American institutions have not yet achieved the full measure of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream.

MIT, which prides itself on inventing the future, says Susan Hockfield, must stop looking backwards and "make diversity and inclusion a daily reality." To fulfill these goals, says Hockfield, MIT is pursuing policy and practical change in such areas as retention, recruitment, climate, communication and accountability. For instance, candidate searches must move beyond sorting through known options, Hockfield states. She also notes that the steps required "in a very long journey" to build a culture of inclusion will not be threatened by budget pressures. Many actions cost nothing at all, she says: pairing up a new hire with a long"term employee "as a welcoming guide," and reaching out to student cultural and affinity groups, for instance. Department heads can check in with women and professors of color for the "cost of no more than an occasional cup of coffee." Concludes Hockfield, "Distributed leadership is the only path to success in building a culture of inclusion, because real progress in mentoring, reaching out, locating new talent, must happen step by step, unit by unit, in labs, offices and residence halls across all MIT."

"We are still such a mighty, might long way from being able to declare victory over bigotry and discrimination," says Johnetta B. Cole. Behind these twin evils stand people with power and privilege. Quoting Frederick Douglass, Cole cautions that such people 'concede nothing without a struggle.' So those in power must perceive a rewarding alternative: "We need to imagine and work toward making a world where difference doesn't make any more difference."

Even the most marginalized of us, says Cole, must locate in ourselves the power and privilege we do have, and expunge the temptation to victimize others. "Some white women who have been the victims of sexism can systematically practice racism," Cole points out, and "some black folk who have known the bitter sting of racism can be intensely homophobic" She asks her audience to "learn how you learned your prejudices and interrogate yourself around your particular journey around questions of diversity and inclusion." Own all parts of your identity, and "never again let anyone interact with you on the basis of one alone."

While she acknowledges MIT's work toward diversity, Cole says "that is not enough," and that each person must take personal responsibility "for helping to change this mighty institution." Her advice: make sure the curriculum moves away from "WWW:" western, white and womanless. No faculty or staff searches should move forward without a diverse pool of candidates. Real inclusion means not just recruiting a diverse class of students each and every year, but "creating an inclusive culture so students of color, or the LGBT community, students who are differently abled -- all the underrepresented groups -- can say this is myuniversity."

About the Speaker(s): Johnnetta B. Cole received her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College, and earned a Master's and Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern University. Cole has had a long and distinguished career as an educator and humanitarian. After 20 years of service as a professor at three institutions of higher learning, Cole made history in 1987 by becoming the first African"American woman to serve as president of Spelman College in Atlanta. In 2002, Cole became the 14th president of Bennett College, the only other historically black college for women.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Anthropological Association, Cole has consistently addressed issues of racial and gender discrimination. Besides her work in higher education, Cole serves as a member of the board of directors for a number of organizations, including the Carter Center and the National Visionary Leadership Project. In addition to 50 honorary degrees, Cole has received numerous awards, including the TransAfrica Forum Global Public Service Award, the Dorothy I. Height Dreammaker Award and the Radcliffe Medal.

Cole broke yet another barrier in May 2004 by becoming the first African"American to serve as chair of the board of United Way of America. In addition to her academic duties, Dr. Cole has served on the board of Directors of Home Depot, Merck & Co., Inc., NationsBank South and was the first woman ever elected to the Board of Coca"Cola Enterprises.

Host(s): Office of the President, MIT Annual Breakfast Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Description: Wielding a provocative list of questions, Howard Anderson elicits strong opinions and concerns among his panelists around the future of engineering education and careers.

There's a broad consensus that Washington is apathetic toward engineering. While the NIH budget has grown from five to 30 billion dollars in the past 30 years, support for the physical sciences and engineering has been flat. Says Kristina Johnson, "Without the enabling technologies of quantitative approaches and analytical tools for the life sciences, you would not have the breakthroughs we're having in medicine 'This is a missed opportunity."

The panelists don't generally perceive the trend of offshoring as a threat. Jeffrey Nick suggests, "If we step up to it and embrace the fact that commoditization in all forms 'is just a fact of life and the sky isn't falling, we can go to a higher ground where there are new opportunities. Engineering is never a menial task." Says Tom Magnanti, "Societies become more mobile. That doesn't mean we have to lose the cutting edge or jobs here there's just a different flow to the people."

But the panelists' hackles go up over the lackluster U.S. performance in engineering education. China, says Johnson, graduates between 250 to 600 thousand engineers a year, versus 68 thousand in the U.S. Magnanti suggests, "We've got to work better at making science and math in K-12 accessible, more exciting." Johnson notes, "Maybe mathematics is the broccoli of curriculum. We have to eat it at every meal. ' We must require math every year. 'Otherwise, we won't have the students to sustain innovation." And, she adds, role models are necessary to recruit more women and minorities into the discipline. At Xerox, says Sophie Vandebroek, "We have many women engineers twice the national average '.Our C.E.O. is a woman, an African-American woman is my boss. 'We must find ways to change stereotypes."

What can be done to help engineering as a profession regain its stature in this country? Magnanti suggests a broadened engineering degree program to teach both the fundamentals and "provide a sense of markets and innovation," enabling graduates to take on more leadership positions. Nick recommends a focus on "teaching people how to be inventive and apply technologies from one field to another."

Description: MIT President Charles Vest provides a critical perspective on the unsteady progress of racial diversity at the university. "As the summit of the mountain we're climbing has begun to come into distant view, the slope gets steeper and others are strewing rocks in our path," says Vest. The raw statistics since his arrival in 1990 are reason for some encouragement, with steadily improving enrollment of women undergraduates and graduate students. Yet while underrepresented minorities add up to 20% of all undergraduates, they number just 4.5% of graduate students and 4% of the faculty. Vest points to "a mean-spiritedness abroad in the land, given voice and power by people who don't agree with the goal (of diversity) let alone how to reach it." Vest worries about new legal challenges to programs that draw minorities to careers in science and engineering, and about national security policies that discourage foreign scholars from applying to MIT. "The modest gains made in the last decade are fragile," he warns, and "we must work together to open opportunities and careers in science and engineering to anybody who has a desire to pursue the path."

About the Speaker(s): Dr. Charles M. Vest is the fifteenth President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his 14 years at MIT, he has placed special emphasis on enhancing undergraduate education, exploring new organizational forms to meet emerging directions in research and education, building a stronger international dimension into education and research programs, developing stronger relations with industry, and enhancing racial and cultural diversity. He also has devoted considerable energy to bringing issues concerning education and research to broader public attention and to strengthening national policy on science, engineering and education. In this latter capacity, Vest chaired the President's Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station and has served as a member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the Massachusetts Governor's Council on Economic Growth and Technology, and the National Research Council Board on Engineering Education. In February 2004, he was asked by President Bush to serve as a member of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Vest earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University in 1963 and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan in 1964 and 1967, respectively. A member of the Mechanical Engineering faculty at MIT, Dr. Vest's research interests are in the thermal sciences and in the engineering applications of lasers and coherent optics.
In December 2003, Vest announced his decision to step down from the presidency of MIT.

Host(s): Office of the President, MIT Annual Breakfast Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tape #: T18161]]>
Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:37:19 -0500http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/15927-challenges-of-the-past-present-and-future
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/15927-challenges-of-the-past-present-and-future
Challenges of the Past, Present and Future
MIT World — special events and lectures Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women
Virginia Valian, Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)

Description: Why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige in every field? To achieve parity we have to know what the problems are as well as what the problems are not. The data show that there has been progress but that a stubborn problem remains: advancement is slower for women than for men in every profession. That stubborn problem is not (or not solely) due to too few women in the pipeline, inequitable childcare arrangements, or women's "choosing" to leave the professions. Rather, the ubiquity of women's slow advancement requires a general explanation through the concepts of gender schemas and the accumulation of advantage. Gender schemas lead both men and women to see men as more competent and able than women, to respond more favorably to male than female leaders, and to attend and defer more to men than to women. Many of the cases in which a woman is disadvantaged are of small scale. The notion of the accumulation of advantage demonstrates how even small-scale disadvantages can mount up over time. The gender schemas analysis allows us to devise appropriate remedies at the institutional level and at more individual levels.

About the Speaker(s): Virginia Valian is Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is a cognitive scientist whose research focuses on language acquisition in two-year-olds, second language acquisition, and sex differences in cognition.
Dr. Valian's interest in sex differences led her to write Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (MIT Press, 1998; paperback, 1999). Dr. Valian asks why so few women are at the top of their profession, whether the profession be science, law, medicine, college teaching, industry, or business. To provide an answer, Dr. Valian integrates research from psychology, sociology, economics, and neuropsychology.

Host(s): School of Engineering, School of Engineering

Tape #: T11303]]>
Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:12:22 -0500http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/15792-why-so-slow-the-advancement-of-women
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/15792-why-so-slow-the-advancement-of-women
Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women
MIT World — special events and lectures Imperial Global Fellows: Developing International and Industrial Collaborations: Ricardo Martinez Botas
During the Global Fellows Summer Program run jointly between MIT and Imperial College London, Ricardo Martinez Botas Ph.D, a businessman with relations to fifteen companies, takes elements from his academic and occupational opportunities and experiences in mechanical engineering and speaks about the impact that it has had on his life. Key points include: take opportunities at your academic institution; take risks and share your work abroad; sell yourself with an image/idea that you want to pursue (making sure that is relevant with the company you are working for); and cherish/remain in contact with people you encounter. (part 2)]]>
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:35:34 -0400http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/13698-imperial-global-fellows-developing-international-and-industrial-collaborations-ricardo-martinez-botas
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/13698-imperial-global-fellows-developing-international-and-industrial-collaborations-ricardo-martinez-botas
Imperial Global Fellows: Developing International and Industrial Collaborations: Ricardo Martinez Botas
Professional and personal development Session III: PanelModerator: Leonidas Kontothanassis, Senior Staff Engineer, Performance Analysis, Google Boston Labs. 10/12/2009]]>
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:36:01 -0500http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/4523-session-iii-panel
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/4523-session-iii-panel
Session III: Panel
Engaging Data Forum